Mirch Masala, Commercial Road

We went mob-handed with a colleague who insisted that it has the best kebabs in London. A look at the menu and some reviews made me keen to test this claim.

Mirch Masala is near the East end of Commercial Road, not far off the bottom of Brick Lane, and just over the road from the famous Lahore Kebab House, which our guide says was once great and is now rotten.

The restaurant is clean and bright as we pass by to visit a nearby off-licence. (In common with most Pakistani restaurants Mirch Masala does not sell alcohol.)

When we return, we are shown downstairs, since they don't have a table which will seat eight. Downstairs is clean and bright too, with the same formica tables, and as we descend I can just about see into the kitchen. Downstairs is also freezing cold. We ask for the heating to be put on, but since the door at the top of the stairway is open it doesn't reallly help. I keep my jacket on.

Shortly, we are presented with poppadoms (spicy, holey kind), fresh minty yoghurt (green!) and tomato/chilli dips and menus. We scrutinise the menus until we are reminded that The Guide will Order for us. To start, we share some vegetable samosas, onion bhajis and aloo tikki (none of which reached my corner of the table), chilli bhajis (which, as a Scottish chilli-head I wasn't surprised to like) and two three-piece mixed grills.

While the boozers tuck into their delicious beer, I have a sweet lassi. It is sweet-but-not-too-sweet, yoghurty-but-not-sour and cold. It is full of air and gone in about a minute.

The mixed grill is the real purpose of the visit. It comprises:

• three sheekh kebabs
• three bits of lamb tikka
• three bits of chicken tikka
• three lamb cutlets
• three chicken wings

which I think is not at all bad for twelve quid. (Apparently there's a four-piece option.) And how was it? Pretty good. With the exception of the chicken wings (I suppose impeded by the skin) it was heavily spiced -- sufficiently so to be quite dark in colour (without artificial colouring). The sheekh kebab was quite coarse, which meant it remained moist while I pretended I wanted the others to have their fair share, and offered the occasional lovely surprise of biting into an intact lemony piece of ginger root. The tikka is exactly how I like it -- cooked just to dryness but no more. The cutlets are thin and still tender. Even the chicken wings are good. Did I mention it was only twelve quid?

I would guess that it was not cooked in a tandoor but over a gas-charcoal grill, as it didn't seem to have that clayey dryness that tandoori tends to have. Does it matter? Well, it tastes different but I would say not better or worse. I suspect cooking the volume of kebabs that this place does in tandoors would be like plate-spinning.

We order main courses when we are done with the starters, to give us a bit of digestion time and the better to estimate remaining gastic capacity. We have a mixture of karahi dishes (all the curries are called "karahi something" though there is a certain amount of congruence with the usual English curry menu), including karahi gosht, karahi prawns, karahi chilli chicken and their speciality butter chicken, a few portions of rice and half a dozen plain and peshwari naan.

When it arrives, I realise that I am not that hungry any more. I valiantly fight down a bit of butter chicken (very very buttery, quite sweet, actually not bad for something with no discernable chilli) and then some chilli chicken. This latter is a bit disappointing. The chicken is a bit overcooked (just bad luck I suppose, since the butter chicken was OK) and the chilli, though generous, is just garnish rather than integral to the gravy. I eat itanyway, and it's OK.

After this, I survey the room like an overfed loon wondering if I can fit any more in before giving up and spending the rest of the evening arguing with a pedantic colleague.

The naans don't look too exciting, and I think confirm my theory about not being cooked in a tandoor.

Happy? Pretty much. Will I be back? Yes, but it will be necessary to wrestle with my conscience to decide whether to give the curries a proper go or just to eat tasty grilled meat again.